Description
Book SynopsisWriting the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature examines how literature, along with the way we read, classify, and critique literature, impacts our understanding of the world at a time of conflict. Joseph Ford, using the bitterly-contested Algerian Civil War as a case study, argues that, while literature is frequently understood as an illuminating and emancipatory tool, itand the ideas we have about itcan, in fact, restrain our understanding of the world during a crisis and further entrench the polarized discourse that lead to conflict in the first place. Ford demonstrates how Francophone Algerian literature, along with the cultural and academic criticism that has surrounded it, has mobilized visions of Algeria over the past thirty years that often belie the complex and multi-layered realities of power, resistance, and conflict in the region. Scholars of literature, history, Francophone studies, and international relations will find this book part
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Writing the Black Decade
Chapter 1: Rethinking Testimonial Literature in Rachid Mimouni, Assia Djebar and Maïssa Bey
Chapter 2: Exploring Complicity in Salim Bachi
Chapter 3: Beyond a Grotesque Aesthetics of the Black Decade in Habib Ayyoub
Chapter 4: Specters of the Black Decade in Kamel Daoud’s Meursault, contre-enquête
Chapter 5: Deconstructing Oppositional Criticism in Mustapha Benfodil’s Archéologie du chaos [amoureux]
Chapter 6: Conclusion: Beyond the Language of Crisis and Conflict
Bibliography
About the Author
